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2012 Salem Press Librarian Blog Awards: Rock the Vote

On Friday, I found out that this blog was named as a finalist for Best “Independent Blog: Public” in the 2012 Salem Press Library Blog Awards. If you nominated this blog for an award, I’m flattered and grateful for your show of support; I’m also honored and pleasantly surprised to be named as a finalist. As should be noted, this is not my first brush with these awards. I was awarded first place in the Public Library category in their inaugural year (2010) and was one of the judges last year. Looking at the other finalists in “Independent Blog: Public” category, I’m in the running with excellent bloggers and some of whom I’m lucky enough to call friend. I look forward to the results!

I’d like to ask you the reader to do me a favor: take a moment and vote. While I would certainly love to have your vote (and kindly thank you if I do), I want to make a brief case for the benefit of voting for these awards. There really isn’t anything else like it in the library world; neither the ALA nor most of our state associations nor other professional librarian associations provide awards on this scale for librarian bloggers. (The closest is the Edublog awards, but libraries and librarians are not the primary focus of the awards. The Texas Association of School Librarians has an award for blogging.) It sends a message of confidence into the librarian blogging community that what these individuals are doing is worthy of praise and attention. At the same time, the blog awards and directory introduces people to blogs that they might not have heard of or considered as part of the personal professional development network. These awards might not be of the stature of the accolades that are more broadly associated with the librarian field, but in a profession where moments of recognition can be few and far between (and sometimes looked down upon) I think it’s a “job well done” statement that doesn’t always happen in the comments or feedback.

In a final appeal as to why voting matters in this case, I’ll say this:

Vote to reward good writing on library topics and the issues that matter to librarians. Vote to support bloggers that make you think or ignite your passion or imagination. Vote to encourage people who seek out, aggregate, organize, and share the library news, stories, links, and opinion. Vote to bolster the people who do this as a labor of love for their profession and its lovely yet complicated principles and ideals. Vote and send a message that the people whose blogs you read on the finalists lists are ones worthy of your time and consideration.

The polls close on Sunday June 17th. Thanks for taking the time to vote!